LaShawn Merritt

LaShawn Merritt
LaShawn Merritt (2012)
nation	United States
birthday	June 27, 1986
place of birth	Portsmouth , USA
size	188 cm
Weight	84 kg
Career
discipline	sprint
Best performance	19.98 s ( 200 m ) 43.65 s ( 400 m )
Trainer	Brooks Johnson
status	active
Medal table
Olympic games 3 × 0 × 1 × World championships 7 × 3 × 0 × World Relays 3 × 0 × 0 × Continental Cup 3 × 0 × 1 × Junior World Championship 3 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold 2008 Beijing 400 m gold 2008 Beijing 4 × 400 m bronze 2016 Rio de Janeiro 400 m gold 2016 Rio de Janeiro 4 × 400 m  World championships silver 2007 Osaka 400 m gold 2007 Osaka 4 × 400 m gold 2009 Berlin 400 m gold 2009 Berlin 4 × 400 m silver 2011 Daegu 400 m gold 2011 Daegu 4 × 400 m gold 2013 Moscow 400 m gold 2013 Moscow 4 × 400 m silver 2015 Beijing 400 m gold 2015 Beijing 4 × 400 m  IAAF World Relays gold 2014 Nassau 4 × 400 m gold 2015 Nassau 4 × 400 m gold 2017 Nassau 4 × 400 m  Continental Cup gold Athens 2006 400 m gold Athens 2006 4 × 400 m gold Marrakech 2014 400 m bronze Marrakech 2014 4 × 400 m  Junior World Championships gold 2004 Grosseto 400 m gold 2004 Grosseto 4 × 100 m gold 2004 Grosseto 4 × 400 m
last change: May 16, 2019

LaShawn Merritt (born June 27, 1986 in Portsmouth , Virginia ) is an American track and field athlete . The 400-meter runner was three times Olympic champion and seven times world champion. He was convicted of a doping offense in 2010 .

Life

Merritt was a three-time gold medalist at the 2004 Junior World Championships in Grosseto . In the 400-meter run, he won in 45.25 s with a lead of seven tenths of a second. With the 4 x 100 meter relay , Merritt, as the final runner, was six tenths of a second ahead of the Jamaica relay in 38.66 s. The 4-by-400-meter relay won in 3: 01.09 min with a lead of almost three and a half seconds; Merritt was runner-up here, and hurdles specialist Kerron Clement finished at the bottom . Both season seasons were new junior world records . In 2005 Merritt improved to 44.66 s over 400 meters and drove as a substitute runner for the relay to the World Championships in Helsinki , but was not used there.

At the 2006 World Indoor Championships in Moscow , Merritt won his first adult title when the American season won the title with Tyree Washington , Milton Campbell , Merritt and Wallace Spearmon . In the 2006 open-air season, Merritt ran 31.31 s in Eugene on the rarely run 300-meter course, the second fastest time after Michael Johnson's 30.85 s from 2000.

At the 2007 World Championships in Osaka , Merritt finished second in the 400-meter run behind Jeremy Wariner ; in 43.96 s, Merritt was the ninth runner in the history of athletics to run faster than 44 seconds in this race. In addition, he won the title with the American 4 x 400 meter relay in 2: 55.56 minutes. LaShawn Merritt, Angelo Taylor , Darrold Williamson and Jeremy Wariner had a lead of over three and a half seconds on the Bahamian relay team.

In the 2008 season Merritt was able to defeat Jeremy Wariner three times, once at the ISTAF in Berlin, once at the American Olympic eliminations and finally in the final of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing . There he won with a running time of 43.75 s and thus won his first Olympic gold medal. In the 4 x 400 meter relay, he was able to achieve his second Olympic victory together with his competitor Jeremy Wariner.

Merritt (right) at the 2009 World Championships

At the 2009 World Championships in Berlin , Merritt was double world champion. On the one hand, like a year before in Beijing, he beat his compatriot Jermey Wariner in the 400-meter final. In addition, Angelo Taylor, Jeremy Wariner and Kerron Clement won the relay race over 4 x 400 meters.

In April 2010, it was announced that Merritt had tested positive three times for the banned prohormone dehydroepiandrosterone . He said he ingested the substance with a commercially available penis enlargement agent without reading the fine print. Merritt was banned for 21 months.

After his doping ban , he won silver over 400 meters and gold with the American 4 x 400 meter relay at the 2011 World Championships in Daegu . At the Olympic Games in London in 2012 he had to give up injured in the 400-meter run when he was a top favorite.

After he had contested some 200-meter runs at the beginning of the 2013 season, in which he defeated Justin Gatlin , among others , he started over 400 meters for the first time of the year on May 18 in Shanghai . With 44.60 s he had to admit defeat to the Olympic champion Kirani James . Two weeks later he won in Eugene with 44.32 seconds, seven hundredths of a second ahead of competitor James. At the US championships in Des Moines , he was able to qualify for the world championships with a first place. On July 6th, despite a new season best of 44.09 s, he was only second behind James in Paris . At the World Championships in Moscow he won the gold medal with a new world annual and personal best of 43.74 s. The co-favorite Kirani James was surprisingly only seventh after stomach complaints and could not offer the expected exciting duel. In the Weltklasse Zürich he also won the duel in 44.13 s with a lead of almost two tenths of a second, after having won first place with 44.69 s the week before in Stockholm .

At the 2015 World Championships in Beijing , he won the silver medal over 400 meters in a personal best of 43.65 seconds behind the South African Wayde van Niekerk , as well as the gold medal with the relay.

In 2016, after setting a personal best over 200 meters in April with 19.78 s, he tackled the shorter distance at the Olympic Trials in addition to his usual distance in order to qualify for the Olympic Games . He qualified for both routes. He won the 400 meters in 43.97 s, over 200 meters he only had to let Justin Gatlin go first. In an exceptionally fast Olympic final over 400 meters, in which van Niekerk broke Michael Johnson's 1999 world record with 43.03 s , he won the bronze medal behind Kirani James in 43.85 s. Only four days later he was in the 200-meter final, which he reached without any problems and in which he was given a medal chance as the world's best of the year. With a time of 20.19 s he lagged behind his lead times and was only sixth. As in 2008, he won the gold medal with the 4 x 400 meter relay.

In 2017 he won the gold medal in the 4 x 400 meter relay competition of the IAAF World Relays in Nassau for the third time in a row . In May he completed several 400-meter races as well as 200-meter runs. Over the stadium round, he won the Diamond League Meeting in Eugene in 44.79 seconds , and over 200 meters he finished second in Shanghai with 20.27 seconds . At the US championships he only competed over the shorter distance, as last year's Diamond League overall winner he was automatically qualified for the world championships in London over 400 meters . His 200-meter semi-final was also his only race in the two months before the World Championships. There he reached the final despite pain in his foot, where he was seventh with 45.52 s. Due to the foot injury, he did not start the season.

LaShawn Merritt has a competition weight of 82 kg with a height of 1.88 m. After a year at East Carolina University , Merritt dropped out and signed a professional contract with Nike .

Personal bests

Most 400-meter runs under 44 seconds

rank	Track and field athlete	number
1.	Michael Johnson	22nd
2.	Jeremy Wariner	9
	LaShawn Merritt	9
4th	Kirani James	7th
5.	Wayde van Niekerk	6th
6th	Harry Reynolds	4th
	Quincy Watts	4th
	Isaac Makwala	4th
As of May 6, 2018

• 100 m: 10.56 s (2007)
• 200 m: 19.74 s (2016)
• 300 m: 31.30 s (2009)
• 400 m: 43.65 s (2015)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Article on Leichtathletik.de
2. ↑ Olympic champ banned after using penis enlargement drugs , April 23, 2010, 7pmproject.com.au
3. ↑ US 400m star LaShawn Merritt fails drug test , news.bbc.co.uk, April 22, 2010
4. ↑ LaShawn Merritt banned for 21 months , www.leichtathletik.de October 18, 2010
5. ↑ HDsports.at: Gold hat trick for Great Britain & heptathlon scandal . 4th August 2012
6. ↑ http://www.leichtathletik.de/index.php?SiteID=28&NewsID=44556&et_cid=1&et_lid=1

literature

• Peter Matthews (Ed.): Athletics 2008. SportsBooks, Cheltenham 2008, ISBN 978-1-899807-65-9 .

Web links

Commons : LaShawn Merritt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• LaShawn Merritt in the database of World Athletics (English)
• LaShawn Merritt in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )